Daily HealthBeat Tip

Want to live long?

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Live well, and you could live long and healthfully. Researcher Bradley Willcox of the Pacific Health Research Institute and Kuakini Hospital in Hawaii has science to support that.

Willcox looked at middle-aged men who lived into their mid-80s without problems like heart disease, cancer, diabetes and dementia.

He found nine risk-reducers. Among them: having weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol under control, not smoking, and drinking only moderately.

Willcox says those who controlled all nine risk factors had a 55 percent chance of being healthy at 85. But:

"If you had six or more of these risk factors, you had less than a 10 percent chance of living into your mid-80s." (seven seconds)

The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 20, 2006

The White House | USA.gov | Helping America's Youth